Personal Rule of Life
theophilus January 17th, 2009
I read something today that referred to a Personal Rule of Life. I also read about today’s saint, St. Anthony, the Father of the Monks, and the two seemed to fit together quite nicely and presented a good lesson for me today.
St. Anthony, a 3rd Century Egyptian, sold his rather substantial family inheritance to take up life as one of the first hermits in the Catholic Church. Many ended up coming to serve with him as monks and he is rightfully considered the Father of the Monks. I’m thinking that every monastic order in the Catholic Church owes him a debt of gratitude for showing the way.
St. Anthony was a great, God-driven, Christ-centric, saintly man who answered God’s call and followed it with everything he had. And he lived until the age of 106.
So, what was the secret to his saintly success? One of the secrets is that he had a Personal Rule of LIfe. At some point, he figured out how God wanted him to live his life and he obeyed. Through the Holy Spirit, he figured out what was important and what was peripheral, and he focused on the important. His personal rule was to walk beside Christ every moment of every day. He didn’t waver from the path. Anything that kept him away from Christ was not part of his personal rule.
What is your Personal Rule of Life? How do you live your life? What is the basis of your decision-making? How do you make choices? Who do you follow? Are you in sync with the popular culture or are you walking beside Christ? Do you obey God or do you obey self? Is Christ at the center of your daily thoughts, words and actions?
We all need a Personal Rule of LIfe or we aim driftlessly through life. Without a Personal Rule of LIfe rooted in Christ, we can’t help but make bad choices and end up separated from him.
St. Anthony had a Personal Rule of LIfe. What is your’s?
I have been wrestling with this for about a month now. I have made a concerted effort to be more “intentional” about my faith. It has been a wonderful journey. I have been doing the divine hours, but in the rest of my life I feel like at times I am out of sync and I think that this will be something that will help me get back into focus in my faith. Here is my hangup though…I worry that I will get too obsessed with the rule and miss the Spirit of God in his Holy Spontaneous moving. I want this to be just structured enough that it gives me a framework for my life, but not so rigid that I feel like a failure when I don’t keep it to the letter. Any suggestions?